In life, there are few certainties. But there are definitely some predictabilities. As soon as you get up at a restaurant to go to the bathroom, your food will arrive. If a bird is going to shit on you, it will wait until you are wearing your best outfit. You never spill coffee on yourself until you're on your way to a job interview. That's just the way life is. Some people call it Murphy's Law, others call it Karma. I call it inevitable.
Now that I'm doing the 9-to-5 thing, I usually need to do those household things on the weekend, like laundry. This past weekend I didn't do my laundry. It was partly because I was busy and mostly because I was lazy. Either way I didn't do it despite my sheets being past-due and my towels starting to stink like mildew. Last night I realised the desperate situation that I didn't have anything to wear to work today, so I submitted and started the laundry process.
I've mentioned how things in India happen a little differently. Clothes here are either hand-washed in a bucket on the floor or sent off to the dobie walla who beats them against a rock at the Yamuna for 5 Rupees a piece. I usually take the handwash option. The weather is also a bit "different." Fast-changing weather is not new, but elsewhere the warning system is a bit more advanced. Here, the sun will shine, then a single gust of wind will blow and the heavens will fall. All in approximately 20 seconds.
I had just finished washing, rinsing, and wringing my two 25-litre buckets of laundry, and Physics and I were outside hanging them up. Suddenly, the aforementioned gust of wind blew. Due in no small part to my previous experience with the weather here and some quick thinking, we gathered up the wet clothes, threw them back in the bucket and ran inside. It didn't rain. Of course.
It still wasn't raining 10 minutes later when Physics and I accepted defeat and decided to take Mike's scooter to the library canteen for masala dosa and veg. thalis, but the dust was certainly blowing. Then, as it happens here, the gust of wind and shattering glass was followed by the sky falling. Of course the power went out. We ate our food by the romantic glow of a MagLite.
A small lake had formed outside the canteen, it looked like the Ganges had overflowed its banks and flooded campus and it was still raining quite hard. So what do we decide to do? Hop on the scooter and drive home across campus, of course. We made it safely, and the rain stopped just as we pulled into the hostel. The frogs had gathered in the bathroom, and it looked like one of the Seven Plagues. I love thunderstorms, and speculation here at work is that the monsoons have finally arrived.
Another predictability: the moment you wash your clothes and are hanging them up, you're bound to drop one of your freshly washed articles in the mud. When it finally dried out enough to hang the clothes last night, that happened too. Of course.
Flown by mariposa at 12:34 PM on June 07, 2005
